Cerulean Cordillera

Originally posted on Sunday, February 15, 2009

Well, the trip started out with taking the plane from Toronto Pearson. This was my first plane trip since many years ago when I went back to China. My impression was… well… planes aren’t very sturdy, and it shakes often in the air. We took a flight from Toronto to Chicago, and then switched to the second flight to Miami.

The second flight was delayed for an hour, but it came eventually. Onboard we watched some kid’s movie about a town called Ember and two kids trying to get outside. It seemed like a Disney movie at first, although soon it started to look like a movie based on a Children’s fantasy novel. I have no idea where it came from or what it is called, but I liked it. The world needs more children’s fantasy films that are dramatic and dark at times (as opposed to Disney happy-go-lucky ones). By around 11:00PM Saturday, we arrived at Miami.

We stayed at Day’s Inn Miami International, a hotel roughly about four stories high. It was right beside a highway and the airport, so the night was an orchestra of noise. I slept without a problem, but apparently it bothered my dad. The next morning we missed breakfast, so we bought a few sandwiches at a gas station, commenting on the palm trees along the way. We checked into the cruise later in the afternoon. The process went quite quickly and not long after, we’re where we are now.

You know those cruise ships you see in thriller movies like Poseidon? Apparently this one isn’t that big (although it is one of the bigger ones available). Well, it’s hard to tell. On the top deck, you can definitely marvel at its size, as it is 12 stories tall and even more massive when you look at its width and length. However, inside the cruise you’ll see either hallways of staterooms, or public lounges/cafeteria/dining rooms/amphitheatres/etc… The biggest of these rooms are merely two-floor theatres or dining rooms, and there are no long and massive multi-story walkways (like the Eaton center) inside the ship. Clearly, Hollywood is exaggerating, although no one should be surprised.

The departure from Miami was fantastic not only because of the ship, but also because of the weather and skyline. There was a fair bit of clouds, hence making it so that the afternoon sun shone through the clouds onto water, and the vapor-filled air allowing for sunlight to appear in multiple shapes. Meanwhile, this massive ship makes its way out Miami Harbor (land on both sides makes the narrow strip of water seem as if it’s a massive lane for a massive ship) and into the sea. Plenty of people were taking pictures, playing around in the pool, and eating random things.

Food was everywhere. Not only are both dining rooms operating throughout the evening, the buffet area on deck 9 always had some sort of food and drink available, and the best part is that just about all food here is free (or rather, already been paid for). I finished lunch with a full stomach, and that continued until long after dinner. At 10:30 PM there was a comedy show, which wasn’t bad, and here I am, about to head to sleep.

Meanwhile, I realized that the Photoshop script I use to make my picture galleries don’t exist on this computer. When I upload this, I will try to upload the pictures onto a directory. If the bandwidth is too limited, then I guess pictures won’t show up on this site until after I return.

Click Here To See Photos

Hope you guys are having a nice reading week!

Originally posted on Friday, February 13, 2009

In case any of you didn’t know, I won’t be around during reading week. Instead, I’ll be cruising the Caribbean on this:

Carnival Triumph

A few months ago, my parents told me that apparently some student organization (Microbiology Student Union or something like that) from their college years have decided to gather up North American alumni and organize a cruise trip together. For the two of them, I think it’s a good thing. Ever since my Dad went to New York, both of them have been working and living alone, and from how things sound, it was probably quite stressful. Needless to say, I got to take advantage of this cruise offer too.

Plane leaves Toronto on Saturday morning. I’ll be arriving at Miami, Florida Saturday night. The cruise will leave Florida shores Sunday afternoon. It will visit San Juan (Puerto Rico), St. Thomas (U.S. Virgin Islands), and St. Maarten (Netherlands Antilles). Most of the trip will be peacefully sailing at sea. It’s a good chance to relax and have some fun. Although it seems I’ll have to bring my Operating Systems textbook as I have a midterm right after I get back.

There should be Internet, although it will be expensive. I’ll be taking pictures and leaving updates of the trip (here) whenever I can. If you want to somehow get into contact with me, your best bet is probably email me, and I’ll check it around once a day. I won’t be using my phone unless it’s an emergency. I will be back in Toronto on a flight that arrives Sunday evening (Feb 22nd).

Originally posted on Saturday, January 24, 2009

Let’s do a quick reassessment of my life and goals.

Let’s start with an Assumption: I want to study hard, understand everything, and become a great engineer

Question: If I understand everything, will I become a great engineer? How great will I be?

More importantly, does it take understanding everything to become a great engineer? Will, say… understanding everything in Newtonian dynamics (a first year course outside of my specialization) be necessary for me to become a great engineer?

Answer: No. So let’s revise the assumption:

Assumption: I want to study hard, understand all that is relevant, and become a great engineer.

Of course, a great engineer, for me, would be a computer engineer who takes active and important roles in the development of projects that are both amazing and significant. So, what does all that is relevant consist of when it comes to this definition?

• I will need to know programming languages and have hardware skills
• I will need to know the design processes in practice for all such projects
• I will need to know how to create and use mathematical models for various systems and algorithms
• I will need a detailed understanding of computing concepts and computer architecture
• I will need experience and knowledge of the current state-of-the-art and market conditions for such projects
• I will need to be able to notice and pertain my performance to the strengths and weaknesses of my teammates
• I will need to be appropriately social depending on the situation
• I will need to be able to mentally perceive and play around with the whole picture of the project
• I will need to have my goals set and tasks organized
• I will need to be relatively fit in order to generate enough energy for these efforts

Ah, that’s a good list. We will work with this list from now on. This list contains items that must be met before I can say that I have all the qualities it takes to become a potential great engineer. If I am a great engineer, I will already have these qualities. If I have these qualities, I may not yet be a great engineer if I have not generated results. First, acquire these bullet points, next, apply them in real-world projects, and if both succeeds, then maybe I can call myself a great engineer.

Some bullet points come from understanding things in my classes. For example, knowledge of computer architecture may be obtained easily simply by learning concepts from classes. Currently, three of my four classes directly belong in this category: computer hardware, operating systems, and engineering economics. The fourth, dynamic systems and control, is not with the area of my specialization, and I am only taking it because of breadth requirements, so therefore I only need a semi-decent mark in that course. How much I learn from the course will not matter.

The three courses, however, must be treated with a serious attitude. I will expect A-grades from those three courses, and I will expect deep understanding of those course material after the course is finished.

Back to the list. Some other bullet points comes from merely experience. For example, programming language skills can only come from writing code for projects. I can choose to write code like mad to gain experience, but that is not an efficient method and will not work very well for me. Therefore, I will merely expose myself to opportunities to train up such skills, and that is all.

Others, such as organization skills, only takes small but constant effort. I am already persevering on many of these things. For example, I create and follow my daily schedule using Mozilla Sunbird. Past experience with establishing these habits tells me that attacking it head-on with willpower is not a good solution. Instead, what worked was the strategy of trying to naturally integrate these habits into everyday life, a small chunk at a time. This process will certainly continue, as it has been ongoing since years ago.

And that’s that.

Now, engineering isn’t the only part of life. So let us now focus on the other stuff. The goal is to integrate myself into a lifestyle with meaning, which I am constantly trying to do. The following are conclusions drawn from past mistakes:

Learning Does Not Equal Meaning: Let’s face it, not all knowledge is valuable. For knowledge to be valuable to me, they must have qualities that I deem to be valuable. For instance, useful knowledge is valuable, so are certain knowledge that I enjoy learning despite its lack of utility. It is foolish to learn for the sake of learning. If I learn something, then it should be something I want to learn. I will not let my principles to drive my desires, for that is unnatural. I will have my desires drive my principles, for then I will be true to myself. For instance, I do not follow duty because my principles tell me that duty must be followed, instead, I follow duty because I would feel guilty, or frustrate at the inefficiency I would cause, otherwise.

Trust Neither The Mind Alone Nor The Heart Alone: Mind is the source of conscious thoughts and willpower. Heart is the (poetic) source of unconscious desires and feelings. Obviously, each keeps the other in check, and a healthy balance is thus achieved. I will not reach any desired states if I rely only on rational thinking or if I rely only on following emotions. At the moment, my belief is that a wholesome and autonomous life is only possible when I trust in both and passively – but consciously – acknowledge my body’s efforts to achieve such balance.

Remember The Ultimate Big Picture: I strive for nothing for its own sake. Instead, all that I strive for I do so because they will contribute to my happiness, which will feed my unconscious, irrational desire to be happy. This is true of all human beings whether they admit it or not. Openly admitting this creates a more solid practical foundation for my principles and way of life. This is not a morally inferior view of the world for I do not acknowledge any such absolute moral standard that can be used to reach such a conclusion. Arbitrary principles without ground in irrational desires will only serve to confuse the hell out of us and make us do things that we have no idea why we’re doing.

The strategy for life, then, is to simply put effort into things that I am interested in or that I find to be meaningful on an unconscious, irrational level. For example, I would never apply for a job position unless the job itself interests me. The amount of effort I spend on these things is obviously naturally influenced by how interesting or meaningful such things appear to me. However, putting extra effort is always a good idea because it would obviously increase the chances of success and make wasted efforts less likely.

That makes things pretty clear, lol. Happy Chinese New Year everyone!

Originally posted on Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Recently, I’ve been seeing fliers and posters everywhere. They’re all about some “Does God Exist?” debate between some foreign theistic prof and a UofT atheist prof. After quick glances at the website of this debate, it became clear that once again, we have a debate that tries to go into every detail to answer a question that is of questionable importance in the first place.

“Does God Exist?” certainly sounds like an important question. I too once believed that this is the central, unanswerable question that allows reason to let pass religious extremist militants and religious fundamentalist idiots. I too once believed that because we can’t answer such a question, therefore our prejudice against such behavior are merely individual, subjective, opinions. I mean, certainly, if God doesn’t exist, then nobody would be right in using God as an excuse to perform undesirable actions, whether creating murder in the world, or messing up educational systems, or just being plain idiots. On the other hand, certainly if God does exist, then it doesn’t matter how evil or stupid of actions we perceive them to be, they must be right actions if they are required by God.

As it turns out, the whole topic of religion is one huge unorganized and complicated mess. The question of “does God exist?” is like a figurehead – everyone think it represents the topic, but it’s nowhere near the real important questions we should be asking when dwelling in the topic. In most “Does God Exist?” debates, what ends up happening is that the defenders and attackers of God constantly makes arguments towards various principles of philosophy and science – they go anywhere from evolution to philosophy to thermodynamics and high-energy physics, talking about topics like probability, chance, the Big Bang theory, the beginning of the Universe, etc… It takes people who are well-versed in many disciplines in order to hold ground in such a debate, but for what? Usually, the final goal of the theistic side is to prove that some “intelligent, immaterial, powerful, changeless being existed in a timeless, eternal state beyond the beginning of the universe,” and the atheists obviously want to argue otherwise.

So yea, all that effort, and regardless of which side wins, in the end all we can conclude is that “some entity” with “a few stated properties” exists or does not exist. Very useful… very useful indeed. Of course, this is not to mention the implied uncertainty with terms like “timeless, eternal” which are concepts that theists themselves admit to be absurd and not found in observable reality, and thus only attributable to God, who thus by definition lives in an environment outside of our observable reality (and maybe only in our imaginations). But nonetheless, even if we can answer “Does God Exist?” What good would it do for us to know that some entity of certain features exist or doesn’t exist?

See, a much more relevant question is not whether this “entity” with “a few properties” exists, but rather the question of “What exactly is this entity?” What if I say that “yep, God exists, but is a badass-looking dragon, or a girl named Suzumiya Haruhi.” How would a theist respond? “Absurd?” Maybe, but can you prove that it’s definitely false? Obviously not. Nothing is definitely proven, you say, I’m fine with that, but can you prove that it’s significantly less likely than any of the dominant religions in the world? That becomes much more complicated. Note that I did not ask whether it’s just less likely, I asked whether it is significantly less likely, and many theists fumble here; they either lose reason, or create an argument so large and complicated that few people can truly prove the argument’s validity or falsehood. This question of “Which God?” is much more difficult to answer, and much more relevant than “Does God Exist?” Yet, when I type in “Does God Exist” into Google, I get numerous debate sites, discussion articles, and the like, and when I type in “Which God is Real” or merely a more generic “Which God,” the results are much more ambiguous and random, clearly the less popular of questions.

Why is it that I never see a debate between Christians, Jews, Islamists, Hindus, etc… over whose religion is more likely to be true? Perhaps they can compare evidences and miracles and argue over things like whose holy scripture is more internally consistent. Although, a proper debate would be large and complicated indeed. The world isn’t divided between atheists and theists. The world is divided between atheists, theists of belief 1, theists of belief 2, theists of belief 3, etc… and every gradient in-between. Even within Christianity there are over 38,000 denominations of which many take dramatically different interpretations for how one should behave. And let’s not forget the religions like certain Chinese traditional religions that treats itself more like a philosophy (some “guide to life”) rather than divine, absolute truth. Certainly not all religions adopt a “we are right and you are wrong” attitude. Surely some religions openly encourage the belief in any religion, and surely there are other religions between these extremes as well.

Now, for simplicity’s sake, let’s assume that all religions in the world does in fact claim a “we are right and you are wrong” attitude, this logically leads to the conclusion that if any religion turns out to be right, all the rest would be automatically wrong. So then, all we have to do is compare evidences, find the most likely religion, and that’ll be our best bet, right? Not likely. Let’s remember what God at this point is. The people who debate “Does God Exist?” tend to define God as some sort of entity that has a few generic properties (e.g. intelligent, immaterial, powerful, etc…), and that’s all we know about God. With such a vague definition of God, we are not very certain about anything as there are endless possibilities. So therefore, even if some possibilities are judged to be more likely than others, we still do not have the ground to say that any possibility is sufficiently probable to make believing in it worthwhile.

Remember, even though religion A might have more evidence than religion B, it does not mean religion A has sufficient evidence to justify belief. In fact, if all we know about God is that God must fit a few general properties, then the possibilities for potential Gods are endless, and the more potential Gods we have, the smaller the “truth probability” of each God becomes. So therefore, if everyone adopts a “we are right and you are wrong” attitude, then the world is screwed, for every single person would have only a tiny probability of ending up in a good afterlife.

It seems that if God exists and is judgmental, then either God has to tolerate other religions, or we’re all pretty much screwed.

Originally posted on Sunday, December 7, 2008

In the past week, I’ve managed to finish writing the music to a song. It has no lyrics yet, but all the notes has been laid out. This song is the embodiment of my improvisations, which always seem to converge into a few cliched chord progressions. As a result, you’ll hear very few transformations within this song. My impression afterwards is that it sounded about the same throughout. That may fit certain themes and certain scenes, but it’s ultimately something I need to stay away from.

Regardless, I quite like the result. For just about every piece of music I make, I add in some “flair” bits that makes the song stir emotions. For this one, I’ve created quite a few of those, and to good effect I think. So, without further speech, I present to you: composition X!

lol, that means the song has yet to be named. But anyway, here it is.

Originally posted on Thursday, November 27, 2008

Yay! Just finished my first University essay!

Looking back, I could have started the readings a bit earlier. I definitely underestimated them. They’re thin books, but the Castells book can be very difficult to understand at times. Speaking of which, it’s about a month overdue at the Library… I wonder how much I owe…

Even more did I underestimate the length. At first I thought: “2500 words? That’s nothing! I used to write emails longer than that!” Then I realized that it’s five times the length of any essay I’ve ever written before, meaning that I won’t sleep early tonight.

The thesis isn’t the best. In a nutshell, I said that Castells is more detailed and has better insight than Tim Berners-Lee’s book, and I attributed the cause to the fact that it was published a few years later and the Internet is a fast growing entity. Hopefully the TA buys this argument. Though, I doubt I would have came up with a better thesis even if I did read Castells more in-depth. Castells is an academic analysis on the Internet’s socioeconomic impacts, but Tim Berners-Lee’s book is totally different. It’s like… a third of it is an autobiography of his life, a third of it is a biography of the World Wide Web, and the last third were visionary statements, plans, and philosophy. It’s not exactly an academic book. The language is really toned down too, it’s more like a book for popular reading. I don’t think I would have drawn better parallels than I already have for this essay. Bad choices of books? Maybe, but how would I have known? Provided, of course, that I spend a reasonable amount of time on this, thus rendering reading through dozens of books first before choosing not an option.

I hate and love Castells at the same time. His writing style is so annoyingly verbose, and I dislike anyone who actually uses vis-a-vis in writing. But at the same time, I have to agree that some of his ideas are pretty amazing. The most impressive, though, is his seemingly endless amount of knowledge pertaining to the Internet, and to think that this book is supposed to be a watered-down version of a trilogy…

For the record, I finished at 5AM.

Originally posted on Monday, November 14, 2008

I came across this quote in one of my essay readings:

“People have sometimes asked me whether I am upset that I have not made a lot of money from the Web. In fact, I made some quite conscious decisions about which way to take my life. These I would not change – though I am making no comment on what I might do in the future. What does distress me, though, is how important a question it seems to be to some. This happens mostly in America, not Europe. What is maddening is the terrible notion that a person’s value depends on how important and financially successful they are, and that that is measured in terms of money. That suggest disrespect for the researchers across the globe developing ideas for the next leaps in science and technology. Core in my upbringing was a value system that put monetary gain well in its place, behind things like doing what I really want to do. To use net worth as a criterion by which to judge people is to set our children’s sights on cash rather than on things that will actually make them happy.”

~Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web

I thought it was an awesome quote. The message behind it is cliched, although well worth mentioning since we tend to forget or ignore things that are cliched but also important. What will truly make us happy in the future is difficult to predict – the complex interconnections between all the subproblems of life begs the use of a greedy algorithm to simplify things, as any other micromanagement solution is beyond human capacity. However, the obvious thing we ought to optimize is happiness, not economic value. It is much safer to bet on a greedy algorithm that optimizes happiness, than to bet on a greedy algorithm that optimizes economic wealth and at the same time, to also bet on that economic wealth will bring happiness.

How’s that for using technical jargon to describe a way of life? Appreciate those with the capacity to be happy, and you shall be happy. Appreciate those with the capacity to be rich, and you might be rich, but you might not be happy. To be happy is easy, one merely has to adopt a mindset. To be rich is difficult, for one must struggle endlessly in the competitive market. To be happy requires a certain degree of wealth, not the maximum potential. Being rich is usually a nice side effect you get for reaching a good degree of your happiness. Basically, focus on happiness and you’ll probably be rich. Focus on richness and you’re not guaranteed happiness. If you want both, focus on your happiness. That’s probably the practical and less ideological way of understanding this viewpoint.

Anyway, that was my attempt to disect the reasoning behind the old and cliched (but important in many contexts) viewpoint that money != happiness.

Originally posted on Sunday, November 16, 2008

I had a dream last night… It wasn’t a nightmare; instead, it was rather frustrating and entertaining at the same time. I forgot the details. All I remember is that it involved some Christian pastor. Meanwhile, it looks like my 7-Eleven shift changed to the evening. I don’t know if this is temporary or permanent, but at least it gives me a wakeful day. As soon as I finish this, I’m off to bed for two more hours.

So far, I’ve applied to seven jobs, out of which six are AMD. My parents told me that if necessary, I can borrow my mom’s car for a year. I wonder what life like that would be like… Actually, it wouldn’t be far from what my parent’s life was like back in Dallas, Texas. They had to drive about the same distance to work every day. Let’s suppose that work is eight hours per day, from 8AM to 4PM. That means I would get up at 6:30, have breakfast, and drive to work. When I finish at 4PM, I’d drive back, and return by 5-ish. Cooking dinner hopefully will take half an hour. Cooking, plus eating, and dishwashing, plus a bit of extra time, I should be done by 6:30. I would probably get to bed by at latest 11:00.

That doesn’t sound too bad, actually. Also, I’d get both weekends off in the truest sense… I wouldn’t even need to study.

Hmm… I wonder how much more difficult it would be to find a place that allows cars.

Originally posted on Friday, November 5, 2008

Ruby: ATI Mascot Girl

I went to the AMD session today for PEY. The whole process was pretty exciting. AMD is pretty much the biggest employer for PEY, as they offer more than a hundred jobs for PEY students from UofT. Basically, if I just randomly chose jobs to submit applications for, and went through the PEY process that way, chances are I’d land myself in an AMD job.

And it’s not a bad company either. I’m sure pretty much anyone who has even the smallest interest in computer/silicon technology has heard of them. If not, well, have you heard of Intel, the company behind the Pentium-4 Processors or Core 2 Duo? AMD is their direct competition. My computer runs on an AMD chip, and I’m willing to bet that half of the computer packages at Best Buy also run on AMD processors. This is also not the only fame you’ll get with AMD. Since 2006 they’ve combined with ATI, the maker of Radeon graphic cards, and it seems that lots of work with ATI cards are done here in Toronto, in their Markham office.

I like their perspective towards PEY. See, since they’re such an old partner with the PEY program, they’re familiar with what it is. Also, since they hire so many students per year for many years already, they’re familiar with the amount of skill and knowledge we have. At the session, we had the chance to talk to the managers and members of each of their design teams that will hire. They were all very amazing people. Some of the people are current PEY students, and from the way they talk and the amount of knowledge and skills they hold, it’s hard to think that a year ago, they were just students like us. Though, I should probably also keep in mind that they hired more than a hundred people last year, and the people who showed up at the meeting were only a handful, so I was probably seeing the best of them.

Even so, they’ve done more than just show their knowledge and maturity. On top of that, they’ve demonstrated and made it clear that the path for students like us to grow is perfectly open. They’ve told us about the challenges the job will pose, but if they conquered such challenges, then why shouldn’t we? They offer a goal, and they offer resources. We can shine too; we just need to be smart and work hard.

Originally posted on Friday, October 3, 2008

It’s 9:56 A.M. and I’ve just had my breakfast and coffee. I have roughly about 2 hours now before class. Actually, I’m supposed to be having a tutorial right now, but considering that they’re just explaining answers to homework questions, I didn’t feel like going. So here I am, writing the first real blog entry on this site, in this cold day. Who knows? Maybe some keyboarding exercise would actually warm up my fingers that were about to freeze in this cold October weather.

We’re about to enter the period of the year where the weather is dropping but the residence staff hasn’t deemed it cold enough to turn on the heating systems yet. It’s a time when all is nice and warm under the blankets, but the moment you get out of them, you can’t help but to curse at life. That’s probably the biggest reason why it has been so difficult getting up in the morning.

Hmm… my fingers are warming up… though I attribute most of this effect to my hot coffee cup.

I’ll talk about my arts and science course.

HPS202 is technically called “technology in the modern world,” except it is now turning out to be this huge history course. Well, it’s not just history, for a study into history would also examine many different aspects of life, like economic and social impacts due to certain causal factors, etc… In this case, the causal factors are technology, and the course basically looks at technology, its impacts, and how both of them impact each other. (e.g. how technology impacts its impacts, and how technology’s impacts in turn impact technology… confusing, lol)

I suppose the whole point of the course is just to teach you that technology are more than just electronic gadgets, instead, lots of different things can be considered technology, and they have such great effects on society that they should not be considered independently from economic, social, and political factors. My first impression to this is that well, duh! It’s obvious. Who actually considers technology to be only electronic gadgets anyway? What about when electricity wasn’t known? Are they devoid of technology back then? Of course not! Gunpowder was technology right? And when Oda Nobunaga drilled his troops in the Sangoku period to rotate their musket firing sequences, which person in the army actually had a radio receiver?

Though, to be fair, there are some stuff that were interesting in our current textbook. For instance, the very first chapter expressed the idea that without people ever developing a respect for accurate, 3-dimensional technical drawings, and without people ever inventing the printing press, technology wouldn’t have become this lasting, ever-accumulating entity that we see it as today. Instead, before these things came into existence, some genius in some faraway and little-known town might have the brains to build some cool mechanical device that saves human labor, but without a generation or two, it would have been forgotten and passing out of existence.

It’s nice going to sleep and waking up early. Sometimes my evenings are totally non-productive and non-enjoyable. See, if I’m not being productive, then I might as well enjoy slacking off, but sometimes wasting time itself becomes boring. It would be nice if I had a good anime to watch (*tears* goodbye code geass!), or a good game to play, but it sucks when you’ve realized that you’ve browsed through people’s shared files on DC++ for almost an hour and you still don’t find anything interesting. Spore turned out to be less addictive as any of The Sims games. The possibilities for creatures are great, but the gameplay is just repetitive.

I think I’m going to sleep early more often… But then again, I’ve said this before, and often it didn’t work out. However, let’s remember that each and every situation is unique, so maybe it will this time, who knows?

That’s probably good enough for a first blog entry. What do you think?

Jack

P.S. Leave a comment! The comment system should be working